How often do long-stay Airbnb guests get fresh towels: my policy across five properties

The message that made me actually think about this

It came in on a Tuesday evening, nine days into a twelve-night booking at my Edinburgh Old Town flat. "Hi — just wondering if we can get fresh towels at some point? No rush at all." Perfectly pleasant. And I had absolutely no idea what my policy was. I went back and forth in my head for about ten minutes before sending back some vague reply about popping a set outside the door next morning.

That was two years ago. I've since got a proper answer — three answers, actually, depending on the length of stay. But it took longer than it should have to work out, and I wish someone had just told me where to start.

What Airbnb actually says (which is almost nothing)

I searched the help centre properly before writing this. Airbnb doesn't specify mid-stay linen or towel change requirements for long bookings. The platform's cleanliness standards focus on what's in place at check-in — clean linen, fresh towels, sanitary accommodation — not on what happens during a stay. There's no written rule that says "for bookings over X nights, provide Y towel changes." It's entirely down to the host.

Which is useful information, actually. It means you're not failing any compliance requirement if you don't offer mid-stay towels. But it also means you're on your own deciding what makes sense. For a three-night city break booking, nobody asks. For a twelve-night stay, they will. The question is what to do about it.

The three tiers I run now

I landed on a policy based on stay length, not guest preference. I don't ask guests what they want — too complicated, too much room for scope creep — I just tell them in the welcome message what they're getting. Three tiers:

• Up to 6 nights: One full set at check-in. Bath towels, hand towels, bath mat. That's it. No mid-stay top-up, no linen change. For a weekend or short city break this is exactly what most hotels do and nobody bats an eye.
• 7 to 13 nights: A mid-stay towel refresh, delivered to the door or left in the cleaning cupboard. I don't do a full clean for this. It's just a clean set of towels — bath, hand, mat — left in a sealed bag with a note. Takes my cleaner about four minutes on a passing visit.
• 14 nights and over: A full weekly refresh. Clean towels and a linen change every seven days, timed to coincide with my cleaner's regular rounds. I charge for this as a cleaning fee add-on for bookings of fourteen nights or more. The fee covers cleaner time, laundry costs, and about £2 of my own time per property visit.

The third tier is the one that took me longest to work out. For really long stays — 28 nights and over, which I occasionally get at my Brighton flat from contractors and corporate relocation people — I treat it almost like a serviced apartment model. Weekly refresh, no exceptions, included in the nightly rate because they're already on a long-stay discount that factors it in.

Why I stopped offering daily towel swaps

For about four months I tried to do what I thought was the "five-star" thing: guests could message to request fresh towels any time, and I'd arrange a next-day drop. It sounded great in theory. In practice it created a logistical mess. Some guests used it every two days. Some never asked even on a ten-night stay. My cleaner — who I pay per visit — had to make multiple short trips that were barely cost-effective. And I had no way to predict laundry volume, which meant I was constantly running the washing machines at my main property in Edinburgh at odd hours to keep up.

Dropping to a fixed-tier system made everything predictable. I know exactly how many towels I'm going through per booking length. I can batch my laundry. My cleaner knows when to show up. And guests — honestly — don't push back on it. Most people staying for two weeks in a holiday let don't expect hotel-style daily housekeeping. They've self-catered before.

What I actually put out at check-in

For all properties I use 500 GSM cotton towels. I've tested lower and higher. At 400 GSM they feel thin after five or six washes and guests notice. At 600 GSM the drying time doubles and I've had two cases where a guest complained a towel hadn't dried properly by the time they needed it again. 500 GSM dries fast enough on a warm radiator, survives 60°C washes, and still feels like something decent.

The brands I'm currently using are a mix: Richard Haworth hospitality-grade in my Edinburgh properties (they supply hotels and I buy direct — the unit cost is higher but the lifespan is considerably longer), and IKEA Njutning in the Lake District barn where I go through towels faster due to outdoor activities and the guests who seem to use every single towel for muddy boots regardless of the boot bag I put out. The Njutning is 500 GSM, survives commercial washing, and costs enough less than the Richard Haworth that I don't wince when I replace a batch.

The Brighton long-stay situation

My Brighton flat gets a lot of 21 to 28-night bookings from people working in the city for a project. Contractors, remote workers doing a long trial, that sort of thing. These guests behave quite differently from holiday makers. They're at home. They cook, they work at the kitchen table, they leave their stuff everywhere. And they get through towels at a perfectly normal domestic rate — probably a full set every five days or so.

For that flat, I factor a bi-weekly mid-stay service into my long-stay pricing. It's not optional and I don't make it optional. The flat is priced higher per night than equivalent self-catered options in the area — my Superhost badge is a real asset in Brighton where the competition is intense — and part of what hosts with Superhost status offer is a degree of reliability that guests are willing to pay for. Turning up with clean towels every fortnight is part of that.

What I've found: when I first started including the bi-weekly towel service in my listing description for long stays, I got fewer of the "how do I get fresh towels?" messages mid-booking. Setting the expectation upfront removes the awkwardness of the guest having to ask.

The maths of towel logistics at scale

Across five properties I'm managing roughly 120 bath towels, 80 hand towels, and 40 bath mats at any given time. That sounds like a lot. It's necessary for the rotation to work — you need three sets per bathroom to wash one, dry one, have one in service. Go below that and you're scrambling.

For a 7-14 night booking, a mid-stay towel change costs me:

• Laundry: approximately £1.80-£2.20 per set depending on machine load (in-house washing at my properties, factoring electricity and detergent)
• Cleaner time: 15 minutes at £14/hour = £3.50 per visit
• Total: roughly £5-£6 per mid-stay refresh

I've priced this into my mid-term stay nightly rate. For a ten-night booking, that's 50p-60p per night. Nobody notices that in the nightly rate, but if I had to charge it separately I'd get pushback.

What guests actually say when it goes wrong

I've had three review mentions related to towels in four years of running this policy. Two positive — one guest specifically praised getting fresh towels "without having to ask." One negative — a guest on a six-night stay who expected a mid-stay clean based on a previous Airbnb experience and didn't get one. That one stings a bit because six nights is just under my seven-day threshold. I've considered dropping the threshold to five nights. I probably will.

The lesson: whatever your policy is, put it in the listing and in the welcome message. Don't make guests guess. The complaint I got wasn't really about the towels — it was about the expectation mismatch. The towels themselves were fine. The guest just thought they'd get fresh ones and didn't. That's entirely fixable with one sentence in the check-in instructions.

The question of whether to charge separately

I've seen hosts on the Airbnb community forums offer a paid mid-stay cleaning add-on — guests can book a clean and linen change for £40-60 as an extra. I've never done this. The main reason: for self-catering guests the ask feels transactional in a way that slightly damages the hosting relationship. You're essentially saying "I'll clean my property if you pay me more."

The cleaner framing — which I use — is to bake the cost into the nightly rate for longer stays and present the mid-stay refresh as part of the experience. It's the same money, just positioned differently. I make slightly less on a ten-night booking versus charging the add-on, but I get better reviews and I'd rather have the 5-star than the extra £30.

One thing I've never done and won't

Left a note asking guests to put out used towels for collection. Feels like a hotel passive-aggressive move. If my cleaner is doing a mid-stay towel drop, she collects the used ones from the bathroom as a matter of course. That's what she's there for.

Your policy doesn't need to be the same as mine. But it does need to exist, be written down, and be communicated before the guest unpacks. Do that and the Tuesday evening "just wondering about fresh towels" messages stop being something you have to think about at 9pm.